Posts Tagged Microsoft
Windows Update
Posted by Bloggylife in troubleshooting, windows on June 27, 2010
Interesting windows update!
My neighbour was saying that her laptop scared her starting by itself at 3 AM from hibernate mode.
MINE TOO!!!
How weird is that, both of us at the same exact time.
I went back to the last changes that have happened, a windows update just installed itself, you know the one where it doesn’t care about your updates “download only configuration” option.
The laptop required a restart to finalise the update, but I didn’t want to do that, just to see if the behaviour repeats itself and of course it did. Next day, 3 AM the laptop came to life on its own!
I restarted and now a new problem is occurring, everytime my screensaver comes up after an inactivity period and I wiggle my finger about on the mouse pad, the bluescreen failure occurs!
I think it has something to do with the display driver causing the whole laptop to fail. I’m not sure. I just took a copy of my latest folder that I’m working on.
DAMN you Microsoft! I think 
Dear MS Excel
Posted by Bloggylife in Applications, thoughts on May 2, 2010
YOU SUCK! Without doing any processing of any data you simply crash and with the stupid piece of %$& that is under you, Vista kicked out from the very bottoms of burning hell with arms wide open, it even makes you worse!
I’m so used to that damn box popping up, I suspect it is a built-in feature. What’s worse than you crashing with a simple open command of a KB size data only file, is the freaking “checking for a solution”, just like a headless chicken running around! The cancel button! What is the use of cancelling an endless result-less operation when it’ll automatically start again!
“Well, something crashed, I think! It’s not new, it happened before, I searched some knowledge base out there or did I just order pizza, hmmm, OH you want to cancel, oppppps, I need to find something don’t I and it’s not pizza, well I better give it another try, you don’t have to approve it, here we go again, la la la … trum trum trum … “
You know WHY you couldn’t find something out there, because it negates the very reason you were developed for!
“Hello, I couldn’t open a file. Really ??? Am I supposed to open xls files!!! Weird!!! I’m not sure how! Should I just have another go around the block … nothing out there, well you can’t say I haven’t tried, I even saved a copy for data recovery“
WHY oh WHY, there were no changes on the file, it didn’t even open! Why do I have 3 copies of the same file!!! It is useless to have 3 copies of the same file with different timestamps!
“ohhh, I forgot, Did you find this information useful 
“
^%$^ ^%$^& &*^%$ !!!!
So many features that “supposedly” make up excel, if I were Excel developers, I’d strip it down to the basic functions! I don’t think the people who gave birth to excel in Satan Villa, use it as they market it and level out its amazing features!
xlsx: useless wrapped in x’s
xls: xtracting life slowly!
I use MS office applications sometimes because of the format, and I don’t mean file extension, Office Org can open MS office, but the format of a template gets messed up. If you are writing according to a specific organisation format, they often pass you a template and it doesn’t work quite well with other applications.
Freaking thing got my ulcers kicking in!
My Mug
Posted by Bloggylife in personal, troubleshooting, windows on January 27, 2010
Isn’t this funny I doubt anyone will talk to me if I was holding this early in the morning 
On a completely different note, I noticed if I open the jpg I can rename the file from within the windows explorer and it will be updated in the jpg picture header! I didn’t know that so this was a cool discovery.
I tried it for txt documents, you can alter the name after opening the document but it won’t reflect on the opened document so if you save it, it’ll create another txt document with the old name.
Other applications like word, PDF, won’t allow that as it known.
Publish Bug Update:
So it seems the problem is solved, I managed to publish the previous post after using the Preview option, what happened is the “Contact Form 7″ plug-in installed an update so maybe this was causing the problem! Not entirely sure. Anyway I scheduled this post, so if I don’t add anything further, then that worked too.
TCPView for Windows
Posted by Bloggylife in troubleshooting, windows on July 19, 2009
In any client server scenario, it’s hard to connect the process running on the server to the client on basic windows commands. Usually all processes will run under system account. This is an awesome tool that makes the task much easier.
TCPView is a Windows program that will show you detailed listings of all TCP and UDP endpoints on your system, including the local and remote addresses and state of TCP connections. On Windows Server 2008, Vista, NT, 2000 and XP TCPView also reports the name of the process that owns the endpoint. TCPView provides a more informative and conveniently presented subset of the Netstat program that ships with Windows. The TCPView download includes Tcpvcon, a command-line version with the same functionality.
Site: Link
Download software: Link
Cont. Deploying Application Packages
Posted by Bloggylife in troubleshooting, windows on June 15, 2009
I’ll share some of the issues we faced along the way, we already deployed WSUS into our network that pushes Microsoft updates according to your GPO settings on the domain level.
I came across another product, Microsoft System Center Essentials (link), which also includes WSUS technology but adds to that updates of third parties software, how cool is that
If you have problems installing the management software from a media, go to Microsoft website and download it from there along with SP1 (link). That solved the first problem I faced.
Upon the configuration, it’ll ask you if you want to automatically create a domain policy, you’ll need administrative privileges and then go ahead search for computers and add manually or in a bulk.
One advice, when choosing the server, take care it has enough hard disk space, for all the software updates and deployment packages it needs to store.
Pushing agents to computers, is through the management console, where you select a computer and provide administrator credentials. You can create package from .exe or .msi files.
You can group computers and approve package installation. For msi packages you can provide installation properties, The executable program that interprets packages and installs products is Msiexec.exe. To see the list of parameters, run this on a command prompt window Msiexec, the below should appear.
On a single domain, you can have only one Microsoft System Center, it’ll give you an error if you try to install another System Center on a network already managed by one.
You can force end computers to communicate with the system center to check for updates or software that needs to be downloaded through running this command on end machines.
wuauclt.exe /detectnow
If indeed there is something to be downloaded, the yellow shield will appear next to the time and date, machines may face problems downloading, check this out:
- Windows update service is running
- All antivirus applications are up to date, because if they are not, they will block such activities. Check if windows defender is installed, that was one of the problems that caused download to fail
After the download is complete and according to your global setting the installation should start, to check the time of installation, check your local windows update settings, which can be access through the control panel or on the domain level settings.
This product offers so much more, details about the machines it managing through their agents, it triggers alerts, and generates reports.
But for now, I was really glad to be able to push third party packages silently to end machines and check the status as successful
References:
Deploying Application Packages
Posted by Bloggylife in windows on June 11, 2009
It’s very tricky to automate and silently push and install an application package across a network, especially if it’s not Microsoft.
Windows Installer package (.msi), is for installations on Microsoft windows. You can extract .exe files aimed for Windows platforms to view the .msi
There is a tool from Microsoft, Orca, to edit .msi, it displays properties and their values, it’s quite a headache to modify the values, and if you aren’t familiar with the whole installation procedure and do not know what you are doing, you can cause serious problems that may leave your system in an unstable state and the application not installed properly.
There is always a document explaining what needs to be modified to suit your needs, of course, if it is Microsoft, it’s straight forward, the field to enter the product key, company name, but what about other products, such documentation isn’t always available.
You can guess out the property values but you don’t want to risk it. I found this nice site, that was very helpful AppDeploy.
It’s all about package deployment and software distribution. Huge knowledge base with lots of helpful information categorized, command lines, discussion, under each application package.
One thing I faced and didn’t quite figure a correct way to do it, is sometimes the application installs an add-in onto another application, browser or outlook for example, the installation will fail if those were not closed. You can either issue a command to kill that application process and then run the new application installer or notify the users to shut everything down because new installations will be pushed to them.
Network Tips – Hosts File
Posted by Bloggylife in windows on May 17, 2009
It’s easier to access by name than by IP. That’s what the DNS and WINS is for if you have them set in your network, but there are devices that are not registered and are only accessed by specific people.
Your switches, routers, firewalls, etc.
If you type in a name, it has to be resolved to an IP, before going to the DNS, your windows machine will check its hosts’s file, to see if it is listed there.
You’ll find your Hosts file in:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc
Open hosts file with notepad and enter information in the following format:
ip hostname
example:
10.10.10.2 Core1
To verify your settings, try pinging by name and you should see how the name is resolved.
I’ve been using this for a long time, I even copy my hosts file and pass it around for ease of access to other network admins.
Bind IP to DNS service
Posted by Bloggylife in troubleshooting, windows on May 16, 2009
We faced a problem with our DNS (link), that made me look deeper into its configuration.
Our server is Microsoft Server 2003 which runs two services FTP and DNS.
You can configure many IPs on a single network card, this is common with web servers running multiple sites. You can view the multiple IPs, in the Advance TCP/IP settings of your network card. Under the IP Settings tab.
For web services, in the IIS configuration you can assign each site an IP, because by default each site runs on the default port 80 (http), so if you want to run multiple sites on the same IP you need to assign different ports not used by other services. So to avoid all that and for end users to access directly through http default port, each site has an independent IP.
For DNS in Microsoft, if you go to the management console, there are some settings to which IP to listen to receive DNS requests and also, which DNS servers to trust to load records from. To know which IP the DNS is actually using, right click the DNS and select Launch nslookup, the IP that appears at the top of the command window is the IP binded to the DNS service.
What I came to notice, it’s the first IP in the IP addresses in the Advance TCP/IP settings.
Solution:
To overcome the problem, I faced in my previous post. I just removed the IP I wanted the DNS to use and added it again and it appeared on the top. And that solved the problem and I removed the IP used by the FTP from all our primary DNS settings.
In IIS settings, if you go to your FTP site, and see the properties, you’ll see the IP the FTP uses.
Email Problem: Fatal Error
Posted by Bloggylife in troubleshooting on May 12, 2009
Catchy title ;P A company contacted me regarding receiving a fatal error their email encounters when sending to our domain.
I saw the error message they are receiving, their email server, trying to resolve our domain using a local DNS in their premises and failing to do so.
This is how I troubleshooted:
- Checked our flow of emails, we are receiving and sending emails
- We have received emails from that company in the morning
- I nslookup-ed our email entries against our domain
- I used an external DNS and all our entries we resolving just fine
- I used external email account to send and receive emails with/without attachment (that took quite a while to reach its destination)
So I told them it’s a DNS problem, you’re having problem looking up our MX records in order to send us emails, check your DNS server.
Actually I was glad everything was fine from our end and left it at that and didn’t investigate thoroughly. The next day their IT person sends a report stating one of our DNS is giving them problems, so a temporarily solution, all DNS queries are forwarded to the functioning one!
WTF, I forgot to check the secondary DNS and what do you know, it’s not loading any records in any of the zones configured!!
So you see, they were having a problem, because their email server was querying our MX records against our secondary DNS server which had a problem. It wasn’t down or else it would’ve gone to the primary one, it was up and running with empty zones ;P
CONCLUSION, it was a DNS problem, but it was OURS not theirs ;P
Our secondary DNS is of course located in the DMZ, it’s running two services, DNS and FTP, each having their own IP. The issue was for security reasons, you configure your primary zone to allow zone transfers to listed IPs, I listed the seconday DNS IP but just to make sure you have configured the correct IP.
In DNS management console, right click the DNS server and select nslookup, the DNS IP should appear, that IP should be configured on the primary DNS.
Our problem, it was receiving DNS queries with one IP and loading zone information from primary DNS with the IP assigned for the FTP services!
I’m not quite sure why it’s doing that … I just included both IPs as trusted in the primary DNS configuration and voila it worked
Sat down and wrote an apology email to the company and believe it or not when sending to their other company handling their IT services I got another error:
smtp; 550 5.5.0 Invalid EHLO/HELO domain.
What I did to solve this problem ;P used my gmail account to send the apology email to the IT person ;P I’ll just leave that to another day or as we all know tomorrow ;P
Send To Mail Recipient Error
Posted by Bloggylife in troubleshooting, windows on May 10, 2009
I get this error when trying to Send To Mail from within any application or using right click -> Send To -> Mail Recipient option for a file on the desktop for example.
mapi32.dll is an invalid Extended MAPI Library
To solve this problem. Since I still have my old machine running – it’s still doing me good – with the same office version 2007. I copies the dll file, mapi32.dll from (C:\WINDOWS\system32) and placed it the exact location of the new machine, closed outlook and opened it again and problem solved.
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